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Afghanistan has for a long time been afflicted with war and chaos. When the American president Joe Biden announced on the 14th of April that the American troops would leave the country by the 11th of September, a power vacuum appeared. Scholars have shown that media coverage of foreign policy often reflects elites' biases and policy goals. While researchers claim that an engaging narrative created by the portrayer, e.g. the political elite of China, can be used as a sort of soft power tool to steer public opinion in their perception of the outer world.1 This means that by studying the media's portrayal of international affairs we can learn more about how the public might be steered by the political elites to understand the world, while also gaining an insight into how the political elites perceive international affairs.

The purpose of this essay was to study how the Chinese newspaper People’s Daily portrayed Afghanistan during the period April 14th to September 11th 2021, with the aspiration that it would contribute to the study of China's international affairs concerning Afghanistan, give some insights into how the political elites of China wish to portray Afghanistan for the public eye and provide glints of how China will position itself towards Afghanistan in the future. The results show that the narrative constructed in People’s Daily around Afghanistan portrays the United States as the main protagonist in the Afghan events. Furthermore, the results also show that the suggested solution seems to go under the name of “Afghan-led and Afghan-owned" (Aren zhudao, Aren suoyou 阿⼈主导、阿⼈所有), but it does involve and encourage China’s involvement in the Afghan issue.